{"id":75235,"date":"2025-11-05T14:09:53","date_gmt":"2025-11-05T12:09:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/visualjournalism.de\/?post_type=magazin&p=75235"},"modified":"2026-10-09T11:53:37","modified_gmt":"2026-10-09T09:53:37","slug":"when-staying-put-becomes-resistance","status":"publish","type":"magazin","link":"https:\/\/visualjournalism.de\/en\/magazine\/what-holds-us-together\/when-staying-put-becomes-resistance\/","title":{"rendered":"All sweetness and light in the Ore Mountains? When staying put becomes resistance"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n
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\n\tWhat holds us together<\/a><\/div>\r\n

\r\n All sweetness and light in the Ore Mountains? When staying put becomes resistance <\/h2>\r\n\r\n
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The village of Altenberg in Saxony looks idyllic \u2013 until you look more closely. A portrait of a young man standing up to the rise of the far right.
\nBy Jonathan Bar-Am<\/a>, Paula Baierlein<\/a>, Kilian K\u00e4mper<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/div>\r\n \r\n

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Once, Pit remembers, he was sitting round a fire pit with people from the village<\/strong> when some of them suddenly raised their right arms. Some of them, Pit believes, did it out of conviction. Others probably had no idea of the context and did it \u2018just because they thought it was cool\u2019, he says. Hardly anyone here thinks a Hitler salute is a big deal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 17-year-old uses left-wing politics to push back against the growing far-right tendencies in his home town of Altenberg, which sits idyllically among snow-covered mountains, rolling meadows and forests in the district of Saxon Switzerland-Eastern Ore Mountains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the 2024 state election, the far-right AfD won 39.2 per cent of the party-list vote in Altenberg \u2013 up four percentage points on 2019. The result reflects a wider trend in the Ore Mountains, where right-wing and right-wing populist parties have been gaining ground for years.<\/p>\n\n\n\r\n

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